Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Here’s a cautionary tale of two
shows and the growing disconnect between Broadway and its
patrons.

“Glengarry Glen Ross” opened at the John Golden Theatre
in 1984, played for a year and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Now it’s in previews before a 10-week run starring Al Pacino.

The run, further shortened by a playing schedule reduced
from the usual eight to seven performances a week, will send
Pacino home with at least $1.25 million. The top ticket price is
$377 and certain to go higher after the opening.

Movie stars bring patrons to Broadway. Let everyone make
money; there’s certainly no crime in that. But “Glengarry”
represents a new low in Broadway’s conversion from grand
cultural bazaar offering something for everyone, to a theme park
run almost exclusively by the rich for the rich.

“Glengarry” concerns swaggering desperate men who lie,
charm, steal, whine, swear, connive and backstab while selling
worthless Florida property to gullible marks. A scorching
character study, it became a very good movie (Pacino earned an
Oscar nomination for his performance in it) and had an earlier
successful Broadway revival just seven years ago.

“Disgraced” opened last week at Lincoln Center Theater’s
tiny Claire Tow space. If there’s a stronger contender for this
year’s drama Pulitzer, I haven’t seen it.

The top ticket price for “Disgraced” -- in fact, the only
ticket price at this nonprofit venue -- is $20.

“Glengarry” is one revival in a season larded with them,
some mounted for no other reason but greed. That’s not to say
they aren’t good or, in the case of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf,” definitive. (Indeed, “Virginia Woolf” is making a go
of it without stars and outrageous ticket prices, and faces a
tougher time at the box office.)

And I wouldn’t trade the chance to have seen last season’s
“Death of a Salesman” revival with Philip Seymour Hoffman for
the world.

Trembling Hand

But that show had an extended run, giving regular
theatergoers a fighting chance to see what the fuss was all
about. Even so, I remember standing on line at the box office
watching as a man, his hand visibly trembling, passed his credit
card under the bulletproof window to pay $900 for two tickets.

On Broadway, such a rich diet can only result in cultural
sclerosis.

I thought of “Glengarry” the other night when I was
sitting in the Tow, the smallest of Lincoln Center Theater’s
stages. All the city’s subsidized theater companies run such
spaces, and they’ve presented some of the best plays of the last
several seasons.

“Disgraced” bristles with the same provocative power that
made Mamet king of the American playwriting hill three decades
ago (nothing he has written since has been so forceful).

Powder Keg

Ayad Akhtar’s play is 90 minutes of immersion in the
combustible powder keg of identity politics. Aasif Mandvi, best
known as a member of Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” ensemble,
stars as Amir Kapoor, a hotshot lawyer who passes as Indian
rather than the Pakistani he actually is.

Amir renounces Islam yet cannot hide in a world where all
Muslims, even apostates, are viewed as incipient terrorists.
More importantly -- and more powerfully dramatized by the young
playwright -- Amir can’t ignore the “blush of pride” he feels
about 9/11 and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s vow to push Israel into the
sea, even as he admits being ashamed of such feelings.

I spoke with Mandvi after the performance. He has nurtured
this play for several years and hopes it will move from the Tow
to a commercial venue. Perhaps even to Broadway, where tickets
will undoubtedly sell for more than $20.

Like Pacino -- whose career was launched in 1968 in an off-Broadway drama called “The Indian Wants the Bronx” -- Mandvi
got his start off-Broadway, in a self-written play called
“Sakina’s Restaurant,” that was a hit at the American Place
Theatre in 1998.

And like Pacino, he’s a theater animal who has lately made
a name for himself on the larger stages of movies and TV.

But even with enthusiastic reviews, this explosive play
will probably have a tough time competing for a good theater
when there are producers with stars willing to parachute into
Times Square, grab some cash from the privileged few who can
afford their stiffest of tariffs and split in time for the next
early morning shoot.

(Jeremy Gerard is the chief U.S. drama critic for Muse, the
arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. The opinions
expressed are his own.)

Muse highlights include John Mariani on wine and Katya
Kazakina on art.